G is for Gifts

When someone is down on their personality, because they’ve heard about too many negative traits or they’ve been particularly stuck in it lately, I try to help them remember the gifts of their type.

We are each so intimately in tune with one aspect of humanity that is most important to us that we embody these aspects, even though we can’t always see them ourselves.

It’s like those Emperor Penguins who are born with a song unique to them. It seems to me that we are each born with a sort of kinship to a particular part of human experience that reverberates from deep within us, during all the moments when we aren’t burdened by our ego’s delusional perspective.

Here are the gifts you all bring to the world. While these descriptions reflect the general teachings around each types’ highest qualities, I admit they are heavily swayed by my personal experience with people of different types and how they’ve touched my life.

When you hear (read) your personality style called, please come up to the virtual stage and take a bow. Receive our standing ovation and our gratitude.

Ones: Your gift is integrity. You hold yourself and those around you to the best and highest standards, because you believe in goodness and rightness. You encourage kindness, balance, honesty and crusading. Thank you for supporting us to be our best imperfect selves and for bringing to us your best imperfect selves.

Twos: We thank you for the unadulterated expression of love and care. Through your eyes and warm smiles, we feel your open hearts. We relax in your accepting embrace and are held by the power in and of your love. We also feel a safety and groundedness in your presence when you treat yourself to the same well of love you make available to others.

Threes: You make us feel like rock stars right along with you. Your gift is that of ambition and action. You inspire us with your energy and optimism. When you pair your drive with your authentic passions, we just want to be around to watch you work as we derive hope and energy to pursue our passions from you.

Fours: Your gift is the creative, expressive and juicy take you have on life. When we are with you we feel heard and seen and welcomed into your inner world. We love your zest for the unique, the irreverent or the magical. Your gift is your availability to connect.

Fives: Your gift is a soft genius. You are who you are and that authenticity puts us at ease. Your intelligence grounds us and awes us. Your attention to the depth and details has informed much of the life enhancing progress of human kind. Your gentleness is a balm to many souls and you are very important people. We are glad you’re here.

Sixes: Your gift is friendship, connection, and loyalty, as many say. You have a way with friendships–picking them, nurturing them and staying true to them. You also have a gift of problem-solving. When that intuitive channel in you is open, there’s a brilliance, a natural genius that you share so willingly. You inspire us when you use your intuition to serve yourself.

Sevens: (What can I say?) You bring adventure, possibility and light-heartedness. When you find a passion and have the courage and vision to stick with it, the possibilities really are endless. When you are present right here, right now, with us, all is well. We most value your presence because it is then that we feel your authentic, grounded joy and know you can be with us even when it’s hard.

Eights: Your gift is your strength of spirit. You are powerhouses in the world and we value when you use that to help us move mountains as much as we value it when you use it to hold us when we’re hurting. There’s great strength in your vulnerability. We also value your love of life, your vitality. Your direct engagement with life can be reassuring to the people around you.

Nines: Your gift is peace. When you are awake to yourself and directly engaged in your life, your friendliness, curiosity and ease bring happiness to the moment. Your easy movement through life allows others to relax and question whether they need to move so head-long through their days.

To all of you with a personality type, I think I speak for everyone when I say, thank you for the moments when you bring your gifts in ways only you can.

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12 thoughts on “G is for Gifts”

Hi Nancy, I am loving these eneagram blogs…I am learning so much. I have a question about typing children though. I have been working on trying to do it for Riley and I am coming up short. I have it narrowed to 4 types but can’t get it down to one…do you have suggestions? It seems as though getting the right type will be integral to responding to her personality effectively.

Hi Amber! Generally speaking, typing kids is tough when they are young. Middle school seems to be the time when they start to know themselves well enough to type themselves. However, it does help a lot to know the ‘energy’ of each of the types (Ex: Sixes tend to look outside themselves for reassurance) but remember that lots of kids look to their parents or others for reassurance so that doesn’t mean that they are all Sixes. When you do recognize the energy of one of the types happening in any given moment, you can respond to that need and support the opposite. Example: When our kids look outside themselves for reassurance, we can help them listen to and begin to trust themselves either before or after we give them that reassurance. Or, if our kids are angry that someone isn’t doing something the ‘right’ way, like a One, we can support their sense of right/wrong and help them see that it is okay when things don’t always go the way we think they should, that it doesn’t mean the people who are doing it “wrong” are bad people.
Email me if you want to talk more about Riley. I’d love to help you in any way I can!

Nancy, I’ll respond indirectly, and I think you’ll see immediately what type I am. But I think you need to know this about your site: In my browser–Chrome, and also in my IPad (safari), your header doesn’t show up. It’s a blank square. Also, your posts aren’t coming up in order. They go backwards from E to A, and then we have a “prepare” post, and then we have G, H, F.
That’s how they appear from clicking the “home” button. I think it’s probably something you should fix. I know that as a seven, it’s probably not important to you, but to readers like me, I like order, and to see things showing up as near to perfect as possible. Perfection is not attainable, and we should go easy on ourselves and others, but this is so far from ideal, you really need to look into it …

Cathy,
I think I know what you are now! Also, I’ve started researching to figure out why the blog doesn’t show up right. Thanks for letting me know. It’s not that I don’t want it to look right, I just don’t want to have to do it might take to make it look right. I’m hoping the nice people at wordpress.com will fix it for me!

Hope wordpress can help! Do you know that today’s post isn’t there at all? I’m talking about “h” . I saw it in feedly this morning, but can”t access it at all, either from feedly or right here. It’s gone.